Short Fiction: Spring Issue 2022.

Fasola’s Freedom

By Shruti Sareen

Fasola sat on the bed in the little one room apartment that they had rented, arguing with her mother. “No, I absolutely cannot live with him”, she said. She had been trying to convince her mother over and over again, these past few weeks, that she could not live with her brother in the same house.

Fasola found him too dominating, too patriarchal, and too insistent in having his own way in everything and in critiquing her life choices. Invariably they would get into arguments from the smallest to the biggest of things, and it was increasingly becoming impossible for both of them to stay in the same house. After weeks, or rather months of persuasion, Fasola had got her mother to agree to shifting into this tiny rented apartment, cheap and with paint peeling walls, leaving her brother alone in the other house, also in the same city. Ironically, Fasola found freedom in this tiny one room apartment, away from well-kept and posh palatial houses.

Her mother had thought it was a phase and it would pass, and had humoured her daughter by agreeing to shift into this cheap apartment for a while. But the “phase” seemed to show no signs of going away. Again and again, Fasola told her mother to go back to the other house if she had a problem, but to leave her alone here. But Fasola’s mother was scared to leave her daughter alone, not knowing what might happen.

Her mother would invariably fall back upon platitudes… “He is your brother after all”… “He is concerned, even if he does not know how to show his concern”…. “Family members are our blood relations”…  Fasola was getting irritated of her mother’s clichéd arguments now… she dreamt of life, love, freedom, as fresh as the whiff of the sea which she felt she could almost smell… she was not going back to that house after having managed to come out of it…

Fasola got up. She had to make herself a cup of tea after all these useless arguments. Young and naïve, she was brave and foolhardy at the same time. She was very idealistic. She thought she could make a life by herself. She did not see why she always had to be accompanied either by her mother or by her brother, wherever she went… She stood on the back balcony, from which a few trees and birds were visible, and she tried to relax, sipping her tea. From the balcony, she suddenly saw her brother coming…

At the same moment, the phone rang. “Fasola!” her mother cried. Your brother has just called up to say he is coming. Hurry up and make him a cup of tea as well and do make a couple of sandwiches too… Fasola could take it no more. Suffocated and oppressed like a bird in its cage is how she felt. She envied the birds on the tree nearby. Even they were freer than she was.

“I will get a packet of milk and a packet of bread from the nearby shop, Ma”, replied Fasola. Her mother would not understand if she refused to do this. Besides, she had seen her brother coming and she wanted to plan a quick escape. She could simply not stand yet one more of those inane and mundane arguments which had no end…

Taking her purse, she hurried out of the house. She took care to creep down slowly from the dingy staircase at the back, instead of taking the front one because her brother would invariably come in from the front. Down the back-alley ways she crept, hiding, clutching her phone and her purse, the most precious possessions for a lone girl out alone in the world. She never had any intention of buying any milk or bread in any case. Even if she had bought them, she would have wolfed them down herself instead of giving them to her brother. Always… it was considered normal for the woman to submit, to offer, to serve, to obey… and never did anybody question her brother’s domineering behaviour in constantly taking charge of her life, her decisions, her dreams…

She made her way to a bookshop. Ah! This was her space of freedom. Any time she felt too suffocated or claustrophobic, she came to this little bookshop… she could read and dream her way into peace here, and imagine that one day she would be as free as the birds. She needed more tea. Tea pacified her. Buying another cup of tea from a nearby shack, she entered the bookshop. She sat down cross legged on the floor, and kept rummaging among the books.

The tea was long since finished. The sun had long since set. Fasola’s legs had long since gone numb. But she was oblivious to all of this. She had found a fascinating book, and all she could do was to turn the next page… and the next… and the next… this book was a rare find actually. It was really surprising that she had found it in this little bookshop.

Back in the little one room apartment, the scene was different—at first her mother had kept reassuringly telling her brother that Fasola must be just coming back from the grocery shop around the corner… a little later, her mother had herself gone to the shop to fetch milk and bread. On her way, she asked people about Fasola. No one had seen her anywhere. By the time the mother had gotten back to the little apartment, she had distinctly begun to think that something was wrong. She communicated her fears to her son. His response was one of anger. “Why does she have to use her own brains so much!” he cried. “Why can’t she follow simple instructions given to her?”… “Always going on about her dreams and desires… bah! Nonsense! She does not understand rationality, practicality. Obsessed with that damn person she loves. Obsession is a trap. Obsession is not freedom. She does not understand that you can’t just do what you want to do in this world! There are rules that one must follow… rules of living, restrictions of living, behavioural standards of living that men have developed”, he continued, in a pompous voice. All these words… “tareeka”, “qaida”, “tradition”, they all ultimately meant the same thing.

In the meantime, it was time for the bookshop to close. The shop owner had to close the little shop. He woke up Fasola from her reveries. Oops! Having escaped from the “real” world, Fasola had forgotten all about its existence. But a reality check had to come some time. She had to figure out where to go, what to do… She decided to first go into a small dhaba to eat some dinner. She did not have too much money, and had to spend wisely whatever little she had.

She found herself in a small South Indian canteen. She suddenly found herself ravenous with hunger. A small plate of idli would never suffice. She asked for a plate of masala dosa and some coffee… these cups of tea and coffee were as unending as the stress in her life… She ate and drank hungrily, all the time thinking about the big question: “Where do I go next?”

She came out of the canteen. She had to find a place for herself to stay for the night. For the coming few days and nights, for that matter…. What would happen… yes, she was completely and absolutely free… free to live, free to die…

She did not have much money… there could be no dispute about the fact that she had to find a cheap place in a cheap part of the city… and she had to get herself a job as soon as she could… anything at all… she was ready to be a waitress in a small restaurant, to be a salesgirl in a small shop, stuff like that… being a little educated, she could tutor kids on the side and perhaps add a little to her income…

It was dark. It was night. By the time she finished her dinner, it was 10pm. It was time for the canteen to shut. She was among the last few customers. Stray cats and dogs had started to prowl around, claiming that the city was their territory at night… Whether Fasola felt as free as a bird or as trapped as a mouse, she could not tell. She started walking down the alleyways, knocking at the doors of any cheap hotel or lodge that she could find, to see if they had any space for her at this hour of night… Cats and dogs prowling around is all she could see at first. Slowly, she began to discern men… some men in groups, some alone… She kept nervously looking behind her to see if someone was following her, stalking her… or whether they were ogling at her breasts, or… which part of her body to protect, she could not understand. She was dressed in a simple salwar suit… nothing too modern… at the same time perhaps her mother was right, forever telling her to put on a dupatta nicely wrapped across her breasts, forever telling her to cover her head, forever telling her to…

She wondered if she should take an auto… but there were hardly any autos this late at night… finally she spied one. As they slowly moved across the alleyways, the auto rickshaw driver began to ask her to do “friendship with him”. She asked him to stop for a second, because her kurta had got entangled with some sharp object… he stopped… she immediately leapt out of the auto, paid him the fare and moved away… bah! These men, they were always the same…

The fact was that Fasola was obsessed with a woman… in other words, she was not a heterosexual. She literally had a fear of penetration… meaning that, if rape was horrible for any normal woman, it was a hundred times more horrible for Fasola than that… this is why she had always had a fear of getting married as well… As she walked down the unknown alleyways, she spied groups of men loitering here and there. The men and the dogs and cats seemed to be rivalling each other for ownership of the city at night. Each one was surprised to find a lone woman so late at night. Fasola kept walking. She checked the time. It was 11pm now, and she was still walking. The battery of her very basic cell phone was fast dying out. And this frightened her. Because it was her cell phone that served as a torch for her. She imagined being in the dark, with all these prowling, gaping men, without even the comfort of a torch… how would she see her way amongst these unknown alleyways!

She was walking now… trying to search for a room she could rent… Suddenly there came the sound of some brawling men. Perhaps they were drunk… perhaps they had been gambling… who knows? “Hey there, you girl!” one of them shouted out. Fasola paid no attention. “Yes, you girl over there! Hiding like a scaredy cat!” came the voice again, followed by mocking laughter. The other men looked in her direction. They seemed to have found convenient distraction. “Hey wait, I’ll get her”, one of them said. “You girl! Come when you’re called!” So saying, he dragged her by her long hair and pulled her over to the group of men standing there. Some seemed relatively young. Some seemed middle aged. There were quite a few of them. She hadn’t realised that before.

Some looked malicious. Some were grinning, though in an evil way. “Your money or your life!” said one of them. Fasola began apologising profusely. “Oh, one of those timid kinds”, said the man. “no guts”. “Come on, kid, give me a thousand bucks, we’ll spare you”, said another man. “What a waif, so sparsely dressed in this cold… maybe she ran away from a home”, said one of them. “Oh ho ho! This mite! Doesn’t look as if she has a home at all!”, said another. “Wanna try going deep in her?” cried a man, coming up and putting his arm around the other man’s neck. Fasola’s body stiffened and froze. “What a catch… let’s go in  a bit anyway, for a lark… hey girl, you”… he had pinned her to the ground, his whole weight was on top of her… he began untying the knot of her salwar and began pulling, pulling it down. Fasola suddenly had an uncontrollable urge to pee. And that’s exactly what she did. She peed right in the men’s faces.

The unsuspecting men straight got her urine in their eyes, in their mouths, literally all over their faces. Eeks. Ugh! Eeeewww. The men were unnerved. “Yuck. Hey there, brother, some more beer to get this awful thing out of my mouth”, said one man, panting like a dog. Having distracted the men for a little while, Fasola quickly tried to escape. “Look at her, that scum is running away!” cried one man. “Look here girl”, he cried, again pulling her by the hair, we need the contents of that purse right now to buy more beer!!” His evil eyes glittered in the dark, his malicious grin mocked her. By now, Fasola had quietly transferred the meagre little money she had, from the inside of the purse, to the inside of her bra. But if she didn’t put up a fight, they would guess. So she profusely began to look apologetic again, her heart beating and throbbing all the while. She tried pushing them away, she tried putting up a fight. But of course the men were much stronger than she was, and they got the purse.

As they started opening the different zips of the little purse and examining the contents that they found inside it, Fasola quickly made her escape. She ran as fast as she could, luckily found a small lodge that had a spare room free, and marvelled at her luck. The men weren’t really evil. She would never have been able to get away from them if they were really evil. This was just, what the men called “having a lark”. It was a normal, routine, everyday activity for that pack of hyenas… waylaying girls every night, having some fun, a little more beer, a little more scuffling and gambling. Fasola marvelled at how the men, who had been fighting with each other, all became suddenly united when they saw a poor young girl, out alone at night.

It was midnight now. Fasola crashed into her bed, and slept. She was extremely distraught and terribly tired by now. She desperately needed some rest. Men might come and rape her and she might even sleep soundly through that, thought Fasola. As she lay in deep sleep, she did not realise when morning came. The other visitors in the lodge came down for breakfast. Fasola soundly slept through it all. Around noon, the lodge owner came up to her room. “This man here has been searching for a girl who might have come in last night”, said the lodge owner. “Do you know this man?” “Of course she does”, said the man, grabbing her by the wrist and pulling her away, “she’s my sister! Out all night, all alone! No sense of shame! What kind of girl does something like this! She deserves all the evil that she can find. No concern for her poor mother, worried all night! She’s coming with me now.” Her brother was firm, and never loosened his iron grip on Fasola’s hand all this while. But Fasola wouldn’t budge. She wouldn’t get up from her bed. Even after all her experiences and travails of the night before, she was still not ready to go back to her brother.

That is precisely what she had started running away from! Finally, her brother was able to pull her back to the little apartment, where she got a whacking from both her brother and her mother for what she had done. And yet… Fasola was in search of freedom. She would not be bound. She would not be chained. She was determined. It would not be long before she would gain escape. ‘How long could they keep her trapped in a one room apartment as in a jail”, she thought.

The very next time while her mother slept… or was gone somewhere… after all, she couldn’t keep a hawk or eagle like eye on her every minute of the day and the night… Fasola would make her escape…as for her brother, she was still adamant that she was not going back to that other house. And this tiny one room apartment was so small that surely her brother would not be able to stay here.

Fasola went and stood again at the balcony, looking out. Ah! Her dreams of freedom. The next time she would move out in the day, not at night… the next time she would not sit poring over books in a bookshop… the next time she would have more brains… the next time it would work out, either which way…

And this time, she would go to the grocery store. And the pharmacy. She would buy packets of rat kill. And overdoses of sleeping pills. She would arm herself with these. Whether this overdose of poison and drugs were meant for murder or for suicide, even Fasola did not know. Only time would tell that…

This had, in some sense, been a life changing experience in Fasola’s life. Oppressed by patriarchal attitudes in her home, longing for escape, she had not yet had a brush with the outside world. This experience taught her that the violence outside and inside the house were two different forms of the same norms operating… if she left the oppression of home, she would have to give up its shelter and protection as well… This experience had also acted as a rude shock to her naïve and idealistic nature. Although she had acted quite bravely in the circumstances, something she would never have thought that she could have done, she also realised how foolish and innocent she was. This would have to change if she indeed dreamt of freedom. As she had realised that night, the freedom to live was also equally, the freedom to die.

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